6,000 in capital protest Belarus election / At least 2 organizers of opposition held as defiance heats up

C.J. Chivers, New York Times

Published 4:00 am, Sunday, March 26, 2006

Photo: SERGEI GRITS

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Belarus riot police seal off streets from opposition supporters in Minsk, Belarus, Saturday, March 25, 2006.Rows of riot police on Saturday blocked off a central square where opposition leaders planned a rally over the disputed election in Belarus, pushing crowds away in a massive show of force meant to quash persistent protests against President Alexander Lukashenko, but thousands of demonstrators defiantly gathered in a nearby park.(AP Photo/Sergei Grits) less

Belarus riot police seal off streets from opposition supporters in Minsk, Belarus, Saturday, March 25, 2006.Rows of riot police on Saturday blocked off a central square where opposition leaders planned a rally ... more

Photo: SERGEI GRITS

6,000 in capital protest Belarus election / At least 2 organizers of opposition held as defiance heats up

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2006-03-26 04:00:00 PDT Minsk, Belarus -- Riot police dispersed a fresh challenge to President Alexander Lukashenko on Saturday, blocking thousands of anti-government demonstrators from reaching the central square in the capital and later arresting a top opposition leader.

The opposition leader, Alexander Kazulin, was seized as he was leading a march on a prison where opposition members are held. Police shoved and beat many of the protesters while they walked on the streets and arrested at least one other opposition organizer.

Before the police seized Kazulin, who had challenged Lukashenko in the recent election, the two sides had been jostling throughout the day to show their strength, and the first hour brought a surprising show of opposition resolve.

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In spite of arrests throughout the week and a police crackdown that seized many of the most active members of the opposition, at least 6,000 people appeared at noon in central Minsk, where they were met by phalanxes of riot police with clubs. Some demonstrators carried flowers. They chanted: "Truth! Truth! Truth!" and "Freedom! Freedom!"

After being blocked from October Square during a tense hour of confrontations with formations of riot police, the crowd dispersed and reassembled at a nearby Yanka Kupala Park, where another opposition leader said they would not cease in their campaign of civil disobedience against Lukashenko and his autocratic government.

"What is going on in Belarus can be compared to the storm of a fortress," said Alexander Milinkevich, the principal challenger to Lukashenko in an election earlier this month. "This was the first storm. We will use peaceful methods. We will surround that fortress, and we will not retreat."

In time, he said, "We will turn that fortress upside down."

Later, demonstrators marched on a prison where hundreds of recently arrested opposition members are held, and were dispersed by police using stun grenades, participants said. Kazulin was arrested by a team of special forces officers who rushed him and snatched him from the crowd, witnesses said. The police also arrested Milinkevich's spokesman in a separate confrontation.

The unauthorized rallies continued a week of small but intensive public defiance against Lukashenko, who is often called Europe's last dictator and whose police state, an island of Soviet nostalgia and communist ideology, is feared for its brutality.

Lukashenko was re-elected last Sunday in a vote the West and the opposition regard as rigged; the United States has called for a new vote and said it will impose penalties against Lukashenko and his top officials. The European Union has also said it will seek penalties.

For the first time in 12 years of Lukashenko's rule, people have carried out sustained demonstrations against him, including four nights of continuous protests on October Square, before riot police conducted a mass arrest of hundreds of demonstrators early Friday morning.

Milinkevich had called for another demonstration on Saturday, an unofficial holiday celebrating a brief period of Belarusian independence in 1918.

Saturday's turnout in the face of police violence suggested that the opposition had far more support than Lukashenko had conceded in his derisive public remarks.

The protesters, who have modeled their effort in part after freedom movements against communist or post-Soviet governments in Poland, Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine and elsewhere, were young and old, men and women. They called loudly for a new way of life, free of state repression and with integration with the West, which Lukashenko loathes.

In a move reminiscent of Soviet times, the authorities said that protesters were not allowed to walk on October Square because the ice on the skating rink there was being removed for spring. The demonstrators rejected this as another official lie.

They massed on the sidewalks near the square, waved flowers and banned Belarusian flags, and shouted at the police: "Shame! Shame! Shame!" They began to push as their numbers grew, at one point forcing a line of police half a block backward, and almost reached the square's edge.

But the police reinforced themselves swiftly, and thick lines of officers jogged into place and stopped the advance. More police reinforcements arrived and began plunging into the crowd in platoon formations, separating it into smaller groups that were then forced to move away.

Many of the demonstrators in the front rows were beaten, punched or kicked, but the officers did not seem as interested in arresting them as they were in clearing them from Independence Avenue, one of Minsk's principal streets. Once the crowd backed away, the officers did not pursue it.